lights behind the eyes, mouth & gills
Green & Yellow LEDS tied to the HDD activity
Two 12" CCFLs above & below Glyph
This case has a number for light sources, most green of course. The most obvious one is illuminating the interior behind the Necronomicon Glyph window. These are your basic 12" CCFL tubes purchased from Crazy PC. They use a single inverter, with dual connectors for both tubes. One is mounted above the window, with Velcro to provide easy removal. The other is Velcroed to some L brackets that are attached to inside bottom of the case. These raise the tube up about 2" and provide better lighting from the bottom.
One of the other lighting parts kept the project stalled for a couple of months as I tried to find parts and assembled it. I came across a Case Mod at BitTech (which isn't there anymore.) for making a case window flash with the hard drive activity. Using his plans, I found the correct IC chips.
I've created a graphic with the circuit diagram and some notes on it. Click here to get to it.
It took longest to find the LEDs I was going to use. After scouring the Tampa area, I finally found them online at www.superbrightleds.com. I was very happy with my purchase of 8 green superbright, & 8 yellow superbright LEDs. I soldered the whole thing myself, after getting a little guidance on resistors & LEDs from an engineer at my work (Thanks Dave!) I soldered the wires for each of the sets into 9 pin connectors so I could separate them if need be. The LEDs were feed to the opposite side of the backplate. To mount them, I used small pieces of plexiglass that I drilled holes into and ground at a slight angle. This pointed the LED in the correct direction to illuminate the window etching.
The front of the Case also has 4 superbright LEDs set in it to illuminate the eyes. Since they didn't have to flash like the window, I just wired them with resistors and soldered them to a connector that goes to the 12volt power. I mounted these on small pieces of flex wire so that I could move them around until I go the best illumination on the eyes. The mouth and "gill" area are lit with two 4" CCFL tubes. These too run to a dual connect inverter located in the bottom of the case.
The lighting for the 12" CCFLs and the LED flasher are tied through a switch that is set behind the Left eye on the case. (Get it? Left=Light, Right=Reset) The front LEDs and CCFLs are not, but I plan to reroute them later. The front lighting was decided upon after the other was finished.
